Excuse, minimise, distract, disacknowledge and deny

Heartsink days like today where I try hard not to react to the cretinous mumblings of David Quinn as I’ve done before, when he meshes antediluvian views of so-called canon law and criminal/civil law. It’s the type of attention seeking the entire ‘persecuted minority’ of Pope lickers crave. People whose inner wires are so trip-switched, they genuinely think the Catholic church is being unnecessarily browbeaten, even when fresh evidence of child rape and autogenetic cover-up are flung on the table. It doesn’t serve much purpose to rant and call him an ‘apologist’, or to scream in sheer frustration when he tennis balls blame back on the state or to say NO, David, NO, this most recent case with school caretaker Michael Ferry is not the first (or last) where those in a position of power deliberately mummify truth, enabling a dangerous pervert to go on and further abuse/destroy/annihilate young lives. It has happened many times before, as we saw with Fr Ivan Payne in the Murphy Report, and other calamitous cases in the Ryan Report, Cloyne and so on and on and on and on. Rape and sexual molestation were “endemic” in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools, orphanages and bog-standard Irish schools too. And so too is the ritualistic cover-up of these crimes by both the church and its lay ‘fans’. There’s no point ranting about one individual because in truth there’s an entire unpalatable menu of people in Ireland still who are comfortable enough to excuse, minimise, distract, disacknowledge and deny.

Derek Mulligan - endured systematic abuse by Michael Ferry

Last night as I watched the pained expression on Derek Mulligan’s face on TV3’s Midweek I could almost hear the dissenting voices questioning the veracity of his ‘truth’. Growing up you’d always hear disputatious whiny voices sticking up for the local priest or laneway pervert who had ‘a bit of a name’ for dropping the hand. ‘It’s all a bit of a nonsense’, they’d say, dishing up a Shepherd’s Pie and listening to the bells of a hypnotic Angelus in the background. ‘Is that young man Derek not a bit messed up on his own accord?’ Voices we grew up believing were fading into the achromatic past along with teacosies and pictures of Éamon de Valera and Matt Talbot over the fireplace. But foolish us thinking this era has passed! I heard of a man this week who goes to visit “kiddy fiddlers” in jail because he feels they’re “a lonely lot” and not long ago I interviewed a psychotherapist who told me he feels sorry for child molestors more than any other group of people: “Because surely they did not set out to do that kind of thing?” A family I know, the older brother abused his younger brother and sister, a fact that is being cruelly denied by his uber Catholic wife…she prefers to view the abuser as the victim. Poor guy, no-one is talking to him and all the good he’s done over the years and this is how he’s repaid! A very ‘typical’ response. Surely not, surely not, surely not…Very often those who have abused need to aggressively suppress any sign of the truth of the abuse surfacing. They can and do go to great lengths to silence victims and their supporters. In cases of familial abuse this can be especially difficult and destructive.

A few years ago I listened to the deposition of a Ban Garda who alleged when she was in training back in the day they were told of a sex abuse scam involving a phone box on O’Connell Street where lay perverts as well as members of the clergy would ring a local institution and ‘order’ boys to abuse – they were delivered on demand to a makeshift hut set up during road works – and if they came across this in the course of their work, to ignore it. In other words, the authorities knew, the police knew, but fiddling with the mindset of the clergy was not an option, and kids in the institutions were fair game. When I suggested publishing it, the woman was inconsolably horrified and said: “Oh no! They could work out who I am, even all these years later!” She was more concerned with her own reputation in the present tense than any retrospective guilt while at the same time the Editor of the publication I was going to write it for, decided her story was “too outlandish” to be true and wasn’t going to publish it anyway. At a dinner party in Belfast, a blockhead of a guy tried his drunken best to prove that ‘children as sexual beings’ is very much a run-of-the-mill part of our human dark side, in the same way that beastiality is strongly documented since days of the Roman Empire. The argument persisted for a good two hours. In reality it’s one step away from collusion. I’ve heard people label our tell-all eon [where experiences of abuse are openly discussed] ‘boring’. As if to say: ‘OK, they’ve had their say, when are they going to shut up?’ It may not be said shrilly, but it is being said. Minimising is still a going concern in the business of this country. Why are we surprised that child abusers, in all their forms, are culturally exonerated or even at times, protected?

When it comes to rural Ireland and the nod-and-wink culture that still pervades in places like Donegal where the Michael Ferry story broke, an example has to be made, a harsh one at that. Those responsible for allowing Ferry, a ritualistic persistent dangerous child abuser, to go back to work as a caretaker at that Irish language school, should be made to pay the price. There should be criminal charges or even civil ones levelled at them, perhaps the victims could sue on the grounds that they endangered their wellbeing by allowing this serial abuser to go back into a position of trust AFTER he had served a previous conviction for child abuse. An Garda Síochána should initiate an inquiry to explore whether anyone in the force up there played a part in giving Ferry the scope to abuse again and again. They too should face harsh sanctions and be made an example of. It’s time for Irish society to finally shut down forever the culture of the Valley-of-the-Squinting-Windows!

As for the Catholic Church and the whiners who believe its diminishing popularity is part of a bigger conspiracy, maybe a solution would be for it to become more Protestant. To allow its flock to follow their private consciences more, rather than adhere to the dictates of crazy Cardinals and barmy Bishops. This in effect is already happening. Catholics, or at least a majority of them are still believers. However, they’re not slavishly devoted to everything that the Vatican and the hierarchy lay down. They’ll take those loose shavings of their religion that they regard as precious and worth preserving. They ‘ll ignore other aspects they regard as dictatorial or inhumane. Some church leaders like the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, clearly get this but judging by the behaviour of others such as Bishop John Magee, a significant section of the Catholic hierarchy don’t. Irish Catholics are no longer divinely sheepish in their devotion. Personally I feel the whole lot is a bucket of cack, but have to respect the fact that lovers of talking snakes and ancient ghost stories still deserve a bit of democratic respect. At least they’re starting to question and no longer feel a need to zip the gob regardless. There’s been too many wake-up calls in recent times to allow for a type of Pied Piper blind faith. A la carte believers and the Church must either adopt a new attitude or die slowly not trying.

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About junecaldwell

June's short story collection Room Little Darker is published by New Island Books in May 2017. She's a prizewinner of The Moth International Short Story Prize and has been shortlisted and highly commended for many others including: Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, Colm Toíbín International Short Story Award, Sunday Business Post/Penguin short story prize, Lorian Hemingway (USA), RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland and Over The Edge New Writer of the Year. In 2010 she received an Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) bursary for fiction. Her work has been showcased at the Italo-Irish Literature Exchange in Nogarole Rocca / Verona (May 2012), Read For The World (June 2012) and Bloomnibus (June 2013) at the Irish Writers' Centre, Galway Pro Choice (Aug 2013), Over the Edge Galway (Dec 2013), Stinging Fly Spring Launch (March 2014), At The Edge, Cavan (May 2014), The Winding Stair Prizewinner's Reading (Sep 2014), One City One Book: DLR Lexicon Barrytown Trilogy reading (April 2015), Hodges Figgis Book Festival (Oct 2015), Bogman's Canon Fiction Disco (Nov 2015, April 2016), Doolin Writers' Weekend (March 2016), Five Lamps Arts Festival (Mar 2016), National Concert Hall: Kevin Barry Recital Room series (April 2016) and the Eastrogen Rising: A Rebel Cabaret. Her creative writing has been published in Woven Tale Press, The Moth, The Stinging Fly, Literary Orphans and Popshot, as well as a non-fiction biography of a Trouble's moll with Gill and MacMillan in 2006. Her short story 'SOMAT' is published in The Long Gaze Back: The Anthology of Irish Women Writers, edited by Sinéad Gleeson/New Island. Journalism: The Gloss, The Guardian, The Observer, Sunday Times, Sunday Life, Sunday Tribune, Sunday Business Post, Sunday Independent, Ireland on Sunday, Irish Independent, as well as a number of women's magazines and trade journals.

I could not agree with you more. It reminds me a bit of holocaust deniars. Everyone knew of abuse(s) going on here, but were comfortable enough to scoff the holy communions and turn a blind eye. I remember even in primary school, cautious tales and jokes about the priest having a wandering hand. The people who allowed Ferry back into the school should also be sent down.

Right enough, I should’ve linked that piece as well. He makes a good point about Enda’s speech being ‘unprecedented’ though I’m not so convinced Ireland has turned a full corner, to me the car/donkey cart keeps slipping backwards. Great to see the political class taking on the might of the Vatican all the same. Now here’s a thing: will the Pope make his PR splash on Irish soil next year or not? That’ll be telling, either way.

Very good June and if abused children like me keep quiet about it, we are protecting our abusers. It might be uncomfortable for people to hear the truth but really it’s the only way to go if you are to have any hope of a healthy life. I’ve a friend who still meets her father who abused her and daren’t tell the rest of the family, in case they dont believe her. She has multiple illnesses. I feel so sorry for her. I’m healthy body, mind and soul and I’ve told EVERYONE the truth.